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Why Django Unchained Offended Me

Offended: Outrage implies the flagrant violation of a person’s integrity, pride, or sense of right and decency

Before the Washington DC football team’s victory over Dallas Cowboys, my son and I went to the movies. It was great to be with him while he was home from college. We got the chance to see Django: Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. If you are on my http://www.facebook.com/blackmanwithagun1 page, you will have seen my post following the movie that stirred a few comments. In short, Django offended me. I thought it was the worst movie ever. I have never reacted to a movie like this before. I thought I was a mellow guy. I hate violence. I thought I understood art and even pushed the boundaries of it myself within my podcast on occasion. Why did this movie offend me so much?

It was not because of the acting. All the actors were great. The actors did exactly what they were supposed to in a Tarantino film. I could take his overkill in Dust till Dawn. Pulp Fiction was a parody on a lot of themes with some mind blowing fears introduced on camera. The Kill Bill series was not my thing, but my son and daughter liked it.

I had an issue with this movie for a few reasons. My problem was that slavery and rape is not funny. It never will be for me. One of the things that added to that was the nonchalance of the audience and the comments that I heard during the show. We just don’t get it as a people. For those that think I am being too sensitive, I thank you for the compliment. That means I am not so removed from reality that wrong is still wrong and right is still right in my world. Collectively, we are numb and dumb to stuff that we should guard our hearts and minds from. Offensiveness remains real despite how others react to the offense. Some don’t even know why it is offensive. There are those that apologize for the movie with no sense of intellectual growth. Some see it for what it is, but most do not. It was like we open our minds to junk computer viruses and it has slowed down our brains, and hearts. Watching the scenes of a dog ripping a man apart because he wouldn’t fight anymore was horrific. Looking at the beautiful back of a woman with neatly placed scars on her back was unreal. Knowing that she and every good looking woman portrayed would had been repeatedly raped over their lifetimes was not funny. Hoping that some misguided and ignorant young person doesn’t tattoo a lowercase “r” on their cheek thinking it is cute to represent a “runaway” is a thought. For those that thought it was not that serious, I think you just don’t get it. I think you have a false sense of comfort. I think you think that stuff would never happen again or isn’t happening somewhere in the world now. I think you are removed from reality. And we you stopped caring for others, you set yourself up for a real shock later on.

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5 thoughts on “Why Django Unchained Offended Me”

The movie was very uncomfortable, but I think that is different than saying bad – in fact I think that makes it good! Certainly the violence and racism shown in the film was over the top – but was it unrealistic? (a lifetime of abuse compressed into 3 hours, in order to give the characters motivication/justification). In your blog you mentioned the horror of the whippings, and rapes (not to mention being torn apart by dogs). Those things really happened as we all know. While we should not exploit that for entertainment value, entertainment can be an effective vehicle for communicating the reality and horror of slavery to the MTV generations. If anything the movie is over the top in the OTHER direction – the gratuitous revenge leaves Foxx a hero – and while we may think he was justified, it should not be glorified)

A similar level of atrocity/violence was in Inglorious Basterds as well, along with the heroic disproportionate revenge. In both cases the antagonists of the movie are comical caricatures of evil – but in both cases the antagonist is serving as a symbol for the entire system/situation. In that respect, they probably are not even close to being evil enough.

Sorry for the spam, these two replies I made here inspired me to make my own facebook post, which I felt was a bit more coherent than my reply here.

A review of Django Unchained (Some spoilers, but probably no more than you would get from watching a preview, or a few moments though of what a slavery/western revenge movie would have in it)If you like Tarantino, or westerns, you will like this. Particularly if you liked Inglorious Basterds, or are fans of the Eastwood “revenge” westerns. Exceptionally graphic depictions of violence, racism, etc all around. Do not go if you don’t have a strong stomach for that type of thing. Rapes, whippings, slaves being torn apart by dogs, many hundreds of uses of the N word. The portrayal of racism and slavery is extremely uncomfortable to watch, more so that similar depictions of the holocaust etc in my opinion. I think it may be because even though slavery is older than the holocaust, its also in a more direct line of our history, and we are still dealing with echoes. Maybe Inglorious Basterds resonates stronger for Jews/Germans.
Some people have complained about the racism depicted in the movie as being exploitative, and rather than being a depiction of racism, being actually racist in itself.

The movie was very uncomfortable, but I think that is different than saying bad – in fact I think that makes it good! Certainly the violence and racism shown in the film was over the top – but was it unrealistic? (a lifetime of abuse compressed into 3 hours, in order to give the characters motivication/justification).

While we should not exploit the horrors of slavery (or the holocaust etc) for entertainment value, entertainment can be an effective vehicle for communicating the reality and horror of slavery to the MTV generations. If anything the movie is over the top in the OTHER direction – the gratuitous revenge leaves Foxx a hero – and while we may think he was justified, it should not be glorified)

On the other hand, A similar level of atrocity/violence was in Inglorious Basterds as well, along with the heroic disproportionate revenge. In both cases the antagonists of the movie are comical caricatures of evil – but in both cases the antagonist is serving as a symbol for the entire system/situation. In that respect, they probably are not even close to being evil enough.

If we allow the caricature of evil as a stand in for the system, we must also allow a caricature of our society in defeating that evil – and certainly the collective violence of the civil war, or WWII was great, and the anti-heroes of Tarantino’s movies serve well in that capacity.

We have moral standards here in our home. We do not go to see any “R” rated movies, ever. And then we still have to do some homework before seeing “PG-13″ rated movies. The majority of all movies here in America are not uplifting, positive, inspiring or even educational. They do not teach us to love and respect one another… to be kind and helpful to one another. Most are based on violence and conflict and then they have to support these themes with drug use, bad language, abortion, homosexuality and hetero-sexual action. No wonder our greatest of countries is underlined with immorality! We have to fight evil influences in all directions… and we do not want these kinds of negative influences in our homes and in our minds. Praise our God and defend our great country with righteousness.. not with perversion!

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